Chinese Space Science and Technology ›› 2018, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (5): 90-97.doi: 10.16708/j.cnki.1000-758X.2018.0058

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Design and experiment of a new Z-Pinch PPT

SHI Baochun1, WANG Pingyang1, LIANG Ke1, TIAN Leichao2   

  1. 1School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University,Shanghai 200240,China
    2Shanghai Institute of Space Propulsion,Shanghai 201112,China
  • Received:2018-02-27 Revised:2018-03-29 Published:2018-10-25 Online:2018-08-29

Abstract: A new type of pulsed plasma thrusters based on the Z-Pinch principle without igniters was developed. In order to reduce the discharge voltage and size, the discharge chamber consists of a solid inner anode and a hollow cathode with an orifice. The space between the electrodes is occupied by a hollow cylindrical bar of modified polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) propellant which can be selfignited. Compared with conventional Z-Pinch PPT and pulsed plasma thrusters in the literature, the advantages of this new PPT lie in no moving parts, igniter and igniter power supply. The envelope size of this PPT is about 21mm and the mass is 15g. Based on the advantage of high thrusttopower ratio, the discharge voltage peak of the new PPT is 24% of the coaxial PPT, and 2.4% of the gasfed PPT. Experiment result based on over ten thousand shots shows that this PPT works well, and the ignition voltage is 480V, the thrusttopower ratio is 17.83μN/W and thrust is 85.6μN.

Key words: electric thruster, ZPinch, selfignition, pulsed plasma thruster (PPT), experiment